RESEARCH PAPERS ARE PRELIMINARY MATERIALS CIRCULATED TO STIMULATE DISCUSSION AND CRITICAL COMMENT. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS. WHILE RESEARCH PAPERS BENEFIT FROM ACTIVE UHERO DISCUSSION, THEY HAVE NOT UNDERGONE FORMAL ACADEMIC PEER REVIEW.
Solar and wind power are now cheaper than fossil fuels but are intermittent. The extra supply-side variability implies growing benefits of using real-time retail pricing (RTP). We evaluate the potential gains of RTP using a model that jointly solves investment, supply, storage, and demand to obtain a chronologically detailed dynamic equilibrium for the island of Oahu, Hawai’i. Across a wide range of cost and demand assumptions, we find the gains from RTP in high-renewable systems to exceed those in a conventional fossil system by roughly 6 times to 12 times, markedly lowering the cost of renewable energy integration.